Question:
Hi, I’ve heard people talk about creating five open loop metaphors, and I’m curious—how do you actually do that?
Answer:
Great question, Joe! You can actually create as many open loops as your mind can manage. The technique of crafting nested or layered loops is often discussed in metaphor-building, particularly in NLP and conversational hypnosis.
The idea behind open loops is to keep your listener’s attention engaged by sparking curiosity and intentionally leaving a story or idea unresolved—at least for a while. This mental tension motivates the mind to stay alert, waiting for closure.
Think of it like a mystery novel you haven’t finished yet—it stays in your thoughts until the ending is revealed. A real-world example is the fascination with the Loch Ness monster. Every reported sighting keeps people intrigued and eager for more information, even decades later.
In a metaphorical sense, open loops are like signal boosters—each unfinished idea or story maintains interest and keeps the listener’s focus sharp. We all have countless open loops in our daily lives: half-done tasks, unachieved goals, or conversations we’ve never resolved.
Productivity expert David Allen, in his book Getting Things Done, points out that the average person juggles around 150 unfinished tasks or projects at any given time. These create a kind of mental noise, often in the form of internal reminders like “Don’t forget to call your friend” or “You still need to organize that closet.”
Personality plays a role too. People with a “judger” preference tend to crave closure and will be more sensitive to open loops. “Perceivers,” on the other hand, usually feel more comfortable with ambiguity and incomplete ideas.
When using this technique in communication, you might begin one story or metaphor, then shift into a second, then a third, and so on. By the time you reach the fourth or fifth loop, your listener’s conscious mind may lose track—but the unconscious mind keeps processing. Eventually, you start closing the loops in reverse order, which can have a powerful psychological effect.
This layered structure lets you embed suggestions and ideas that are absorbed below the surface of conscious awareness, which is especially useful in persuasive or therapeutic contexts.
So to build five open loop metaphors:
- Start telling a story (loop 1),
- Before finishing, begin another (loop 2),
- Continue this pattern up to loop 5,
- Then reverse the process and close each story one by one.
